Brent Budowsky: I warn Senate Republicans if they threaten to filibuster a Cabinet nomination for unfair partisan reasons they will guarantee a Senate majority will move to end these abuses of filibusters once and for all.

Dave Zirin: I’m sure it’s tempting to look at today as an advance for women in sports. But it’s very difficult think that today’s national celebration of a multi-billionaire and a war criminal has anything to do with women’s liberation.

Michael Sigman: Isn’t it precisely the job of political, financial and religious leaders to imagine disasters and then prepare for them? (Plausible ones, that is, as opposed to, say, anti-asteroid Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher’s crusade for funds to combat “objects coming from space that could cause colossal loss of lives on our planet.”) And if their imaginations fail them, and us, shouldn’t they be held accountable — morally and, when appropriate, criminally?

Despite pressure on the U.S. to withdraw from Iraq, Alabbasi reported, Chomsky said the U.S. continues to seek a long-term presence in the country and the huge U.S. embassy in Baghdad is to be expanded under Obama.

Some idea of Pentagon dominance over diplomatic approaches may be gleaned from the Pentagon’s $664 billion annual budget compared with State’s $52 billion. “Washington employs more military band members than it does foreign service officers.”

Plugging Pasadena’s School-to-Prison Pipeline. The policy was then to educate the middle class kids, but to not educate poor White, Latino and African-American kids. These policies continue, wrapped up in words of sweet kindness and deeds of destruction. –Dick Price Forget “Greenest City in America,” LA’s the “Meanest.” For all the talk and political pandering […]

Let’s see if I got this right. The prime minister of an allied government disses the U.S. Secretary of State, says he went over her head and got her boss, the President of the United States, to countermand her intention to vote for a resolution at the United Nations and gloats over the fact that […]

The Body Politic

Dave Zirin: She is our Jordan. She is our Jim Brown. She is our Babe Ruth, calling his shots. She is no longer content to dodge bullets, but understands how to stop them. Serena is that rare athlete who has not only mastered her sport. She’s harnessed it.